For both, for advantage in most sports and attractiveness the typical calisthenics physique, sort of gymnast/football(soccer) one seems like the ideal one to me, yet a lot of people seem to be obsessed with getting overly buff.
For the 'extreme' of what most competitors go through? Probably not.
But resistance/strength training more generally is probably beneficial:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_training
For women especially, as they age about one-third suffer from osteoporosis, and lifting (heavy!) weights forces body adaptions that help strengthen bones. One also often hears about seniors slipping/falling and breaking hips, which can cause a downward health spiral: doing squats and deadlifts with respectable weights (1.0x to 1.5x your bodyweight) would probably help with that.
Some simple tests can reliably predict longevity: number of push-ups that can be done, speed of walking up stairs, and a sitting-rising test:
* https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/simple-sitting-test-...
All involved strength more than aerobic ability.
There's also the fact that strength is useful in life: from carrying children and groceries, moving (heavy) items, etc. It will also help in keeping one's independence when older: I see infomercials about electric chairs to help the elderly up and down stairs. That's completely unnecessary if one has sufficient muscle mass (which is harder to keep as one ages) for mobility and stability.
* https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/want-to-live-...
If one has a limited amount of time, the one activity that I'd do (and do personally) is weight training. The main disadvantage is that some equipment is needed, and with gyms closed nowadays it's hard to get much done. As a fall-back I have taken up running, but it's not my first choice (though I cycled to work pre-WFH).
You do the former to become stronger, the latter to look it, and even ignoring the substance abuse (which happens in strength training, too) that adds aspects to training that are unhealthy.
I also think that strength training reaches a plateau fairly soon where endurance training gives bigger benefits than further strength training.
A simple program like Starting Strength will have you train for not much more than 60 minutes three days a week and you'll make significant strength gains up to 1.5x body weight easily.
It was a great way to get started though, and I'm really happy about the changes my body went through in six months or so. After that, you have to find a different program or a trainer.
There is a starting strength lift standards which shows more what to expect from a female perspective and is indeed a lot smaller relative to body weight.
Starting strength is definitely a beginner program but it's simplicity is an excellent place to start.
After the SS program I've gone to the Texas Method and enjoyed great success, ymmv.
* https://www.bretcontreras.store/products/strong-curves
* https://old.reddit.com/r/StrongCurves/
I still think that SS is a good starter for the first 3-6 months, but once you can no longer jump by 2-5 pounds (1-2 kg) per workout, you've basically used up your beginner gains. (True also for men.)
SS isn't meant to be a long-term program, but mostly (a) getting people to actually do strength training with (b) proper form and (c) concentrating on the Big 5 movements that probably give the best bang-for-buck/time.
Resistance training is great, but let's not oversell it to others! A beginner not only needs to buy stuff (or commute to/from the gym) and create their plan and schedule it, they also need to account for spending extra time to correct their posture, have a longer recovery time, shower etc.
Thinking to get away with 60min from the get go might be discouraging.
I seriously disagree with this. 60 minutes is more than sufficient if you aren't screwing around. I also think it's baffling that people are still recommending Starting Strength when there are far more efficient and productive programs to start off with.
Especially as a beginner, you can get a significant training stimulus without having to waste 2-3 hours of your day. How absurd. Think 80/20. I even think spending that much time would be more detrimental than beneficial in the beginning.
For beginners i doubt there is much variation in progress from one program to the other, and remember SS is for beginners.
The benefit of SS is its simplicity, 4 basic lifts with simple programming. Beginners benefit from such simplicity.
Obviously no one is going to account for commute in how long a program takes. Some take hours to get to the nearest gym and others have home gyms.
I used to do the exercise with little a no weight, record myself and double check for a longer time, until I found that I got used to the right movements.
I always found good lifting form to be a will power thing more than a skill thing. Easy to maintain when the bar was empty, very hard to maintain on the last couple reps of my heaviest sets. Did form check videos occasionally to keep myself honest but really, I knew when I had bad form.
Sometimes you'll need to deload to correct form and you'll likely be starting to look at different programs soon enough.
For one reason or another I've had to deload, usually missing training for a prolonged period of time. I'm at my longest sustained training period in awhile now and about to attempt a new 5rm squat tonight, I'm a little intimidated:). It soon becomes more about the psychology imo.
like, it's hard to imagine what you would do for a better posture other than highbar squats, deadlifts, rows, etc
what do you need to buy? what posture correction are you doing? how is showering a meaningful amount of time when most people already shower daily?
you're inventing problems that don't exist.
One definitely should aim to eat well and sleep enough, but that's generally true anyway.
This said, they are definitely closer to "ideal" natural proportions than most bodybuilders. They are also more balanced than tennis/basketball/baseball players, who have to work quite hard in the gym to compensate for the extremely unbalanced efforts their sports require.
There is a lot to be said for the rugby physique; sadly the sport is insane on the grounds of personal safety.
E.g. pro cyclists have to avoid any upper body activities like swimming since they'll put on upper body mass that hurts their performance; the opposite is pro climbers where training quads will lower the performance since they'll grow extra leg mass that arms will have to lift.
A time trialist or sprinter would be much less concerned about upper body weight than a pure climber.
Even when he was as shedding weight for the Tour, Wiggins was was still doing dead lifts (with a low weight) and other upper body exercises because having a strong core is very useful.
Most natural body-building will never reach that level. On the other way, there is plenty of good health reasons to train with weights, and build a good/solid muscle mass. It also improves a lot of other aspects in your life (social).
So, weight-training, bodybuilding - lite is great. Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy.
Steroids are not necessarily always bad, tho taking your body to the extremes of competitive bodybuilding probably is.
I find it interesting that most of my friends/social set will (rightly) dismiss "high school health class" fearmongering over drugs, but when that drug is anabolic steroids suddenly every warning is true.
It seems reasonable to me that the same skepticism applied to claims about any drug's danger - claims which frankly derive from government sources interested primarily in social engineering - should also be applied to steroids.
Indeed, we should.
I don't use androgenic steroids, but I'm right on the cliff where natural levels start falling off, and once I'm over it, I will give it some serious consideration.
I probably know more than that and haven't paid that much attention to hormones per se, so I imagine if this interests you, you could figure out a whole lot more from readily available information on the internet.
My understanding is that many of them don't do bloodwork to test existing hormone levels and many that do use very liberal interpretations of what standard levels in men should be at a given age, etc.
Think of the "pill mills" that lead to the opiod crisis where as long as you had the cash someone would write a prescription. Note that I'm not insinuating similar levels of risk or harm, merely pointing out the flexibility of medical ethics for some doctors in these areas.
Use your favorite search engine and search "anti-aging clinic". They're in many US cities, available online, and a popular medical tourism destination.
EDIT: I also suspect these kinds of medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman in Wolverine. This guy was born in 1968, which puts him at ~44 years old during filming. Look at his physique as a 44 year old man and tell me that was just from broccoli and chicken (especially considering his physique in roles leading up to Wolverine).
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the chances that so many of these mid to late 40s Hollywood actors have a physique that would be excellent on a 20-25 year old isn't likely due to just freak genetics, diet, and hard work at the gym. Especially when the budgets of these films can easily exceed $100 million.
Another factor is that there is relentless competition from a huge number of people trying to become a famous star: severe filtering that will select for intensely driven people (amongst other attributes that would drive someone towards interventions).
trenbolone and other 19-nor substances are neurotoxic and thrash your internal organs.
fatburners like clenbuterol or dnp are uh, not good.
insulin (which is massively anabolic, btw) can kill you very easily if you mis-time your meals.
growth hormone enlarges organs at supraphysiological doses
Know well that something as simple as visible abdominal muscles already requires a body fat percentage that is lower than what is generally considered healthy.[0]
One's musculature should not be “defined” for optimal health, — that requires dropping below healthy fat levels.
Professional body builders go far beyond that, of course.
[0]: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/how-to-get-six-pack-...
Agree on the unhealthy BF% for bodybuilders though
10% is at the outskirts of what is generally considered acceptable, it is not a disaster such as the 3% that some body builders go for, but gaining more is definitely better and to achieve 10% one must in general consciously malnutitrion and avoid eating food that the body can use to synthesize fat.
No, no! If you are eating foods that humans should eat and exercising about an hour a day, you will naturally fall below 10% no matter what else you do.
I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
Perhaps if you mean with that what human beings should eat without that exercise.
> I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
Sprinters are very much malnourished to keep weight to a minimum.
You will notice that in other sports that do not rely on reducing weight such as shot put or powerlifting, the athletes tend to develop a very different physique.
This is NOT how any professional sprinter trains. Due to the nature of the exercise and the massive caloric expenditure that happens during sprinting, the mindset is more about trying to fit in in as much food as possible (while keeping to reasonable macro-nutrient ratios) rather than attempting to "keep weight at a minimum".
Haven't you ever seen how practically every 100m sprinter looks? It is not a physique that could be described as minimal, at all! My PB for the 100m is ~10.4s, so not quite pro but very fast.
What's unhealthy about body bulding, beyond the direct effects of the roids, is that these guys are like 300+ lbs. That and becoming severely dehydrated from taking diuretics before competitions.
You cannot possibly think that men like this are malnourished...
https://yorkshireccc.com/uploads/crop_image/260/270/20140516...?
https://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Sainsbury+British+Champi...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cJwna2z0LQI/TeJHl4AZW9I/AAAAAAAAAO...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/8b/fc/1b8bfcef69fdb3c9aae7...
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/04/article-2647902-1...
They are very much malnourished and their body fat percentage is lower than is optimal for good health and they most likely suffer from the associated complications of too little body fat.
Umm, which countries are you talking about here? I've been to several countries and I really don't think I've been anywhere where it's "completely normal" for men to have visible abs (let's say for definition's sake, I don't think I've been to a country in which >10% of the adult male population has abs). Not that I could necessarily tell most of the time, most people have shirts on during the day.
I do agree with your point though - I don't think visible as are unhealthy.
contest bodybuilders get lean and that has detrimental hormonal effects and tanks their metabolism / NEAT, but evidence on post-contest weight rebounds suggests these are acute effects and don't have long-term adverse health outcomes. if you want to read more, look for papers on "metabolic adaptation" by Helms, Trexler, or Schoenfeld
I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy rather than functional endpoints (strength, power, endurance). It's always stuck out to me that workout guides just treat this as normal — "everyone" wants big muscles, so we should all do painful eccentric reps to stress them out and build up lots of not-so-useful tissue? It's not obvious this is directly comparable to normal exercise.
Culturally it bothers me — fitness should be for everyone, but being a gym rat under whatever name (Crossfitter, etc) has become an identity that you either cling to or retreat from, to the detriment of both camps.
For steroid users, the equation changes some, as they benefit more from very high volume, high rep training that pumps the muscles full of blood. Natural lifters cannot recover quickly enough from this sort of training.
[1]standard disclaimer about taking this with a grain of salt as I'm just some internet stranger, but I do have > 10 years experience with this
Being fit is something else altogether, and produces better health outcomes AIUI.
The mental and physical requirements coupled with seeing the weekly changes in the mirror were damn near the only thing that kept me sane over a busy period of work, combined with lockdown, combined with my wife being away for over three months due to work/family illness and unable to see each other due to travel restrictions.
I also went from an unhealthy BMI, high but not yet dangerously so cholesterol levels to nearly stage lean (have since raised my weight to a saner level) and having excellent blood work all round to the point of my doctor being completely astonished. (Note, I did not take any androgenic substances, so I wasn’t expecting much other than positive changes in my blood work)
you are almost certain to sustain significant acute injuries doing gymnastics, football, basketball, etc over a long training career. the same cannot be said for bodybuilding - you might develop overuse injuries or wear and tear, but still less frequently than in other sports.
it's really, really, really hard to tear an acl, break a collarbone, or dislocate a shoulder bodybuilding. yet I know someone who did all 3 in one season of rugby!
And there's enough dumb people around that try and lift too much without being spotted.
you would be on the mark if you mentioned the anabolic agents in contest prep, especially fat-burners/diuretics/insulin. those absolutely shorten the lifespan of bodybuilders drastically, but natural bodybuilding is a perfectly healthy and popular alternative.
> A competition weightlifter can only go for a record attempt once, maybe twice a year - their nerves are fried after that.
it's unclear whether you mean a true olympic weightlifter or a powerlifter - neither is true. the bulgarian weightlifting team under Abadjiev famously competed dozens of times per year while training just as hard throughout the year. the IWF olympic qualification (before covid changed the timeline) required athletes to compete in 6 events from november 2018 to april 2020 - that's more than twice a year alone. a top american weightlifter might compete at pan ams, IWF worlds, and USAW nationals alone each year. in powerlifting, an elite american lifter at minimum has to do USAPL nationals and IPF worlds, but might also do the arnold or local meets.
[1] Keogh and Winwood, or Siewe et al.
Is that actually so? Looking at US homicide statistics, over 75% of cases involve firearms. Would a bodybuilder have better chances of surviving a bullet wound?
However, it strikes me as a particular dual standard that some jurisdictions have tackled models whose body fat percentage is dangerously low, but who do not have steroid-built, unhealthily large muscles with it that their body fat can't healthily support, but seem to be completely fine with adding said unhealthy muscles, to the former.
It comes as no surprise to me that such jurisdictions elect to primarily use the very unreliable and pseudoscientific body mass index in lieu of the more reliable body fat percentage as an indicator of “underweight”, for had they elected to use the latter: it would accurately show that most body builders are unhealthy low in fat, and would be struck down under the same rules.
But of course, that is not what they desire, for that falls under what they consider to be their conventional ideal of beauty, and “health concerns" have always been one of the first thing the authoritarian reaches for, to enforce his own will and social control over others.
We ban drugs, for they are unhealthy! but alcohol? well I don't know about that... they are socially acceptable, after all.
What are you talking about here?
> unhealthily large muscles
Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.
> most body builders are unhealthy low in fat
Source?
> But of course, that is not what they desire, for that falls under what they consider to be their conventional ideal of beauty [...]
Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?
Some jurisdictions do not allow models under a certain b.m.i. to be commercially featured:
https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/06/counties-fighting-underw...
> Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.
They do, their low body fat can't support them and they suffer from a myriad of complications.
Even if they had the body fat to support them, such as in many professional athletes, the strain to achieve them is not particularly healthy.
> Source?
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/legendary-bodybuilder-died-bod...
As the article says, professional body builders often go in the 3-to-5% body fat range, which is very unhealthy.
> Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?
Not at all; — I'm saying that “health” is but a convenient excuse to ban what the authoritarian considers not socially desirable, in this case for an ideal of beauty, whereas he is fine with letting stand that which he considers beautiful, no matter how unhealthy it might be.
The politicians allow this nonsensical, pseudoscientific self-regulation instead of demanding that they switch to b.f.p., because they know well that it would outlaw body builders, which they do not want, despite their being as unhealthy.
The industry came up with this method, of course, to allow bodybuilders to continue, and only having to cull the the hyperthin.
It's a nice unspoken understanding between them that enables both to place the blame on the other.
If the industry had found such a clever way to allow the hyperthin to still continue, one could be certain of that the politicians would step in to order a halt to it.
Indeed, not much thought was given: they found certain models to look ugly because they were hyperthin, so they instinctively searched for a rationalization to ban them and selling it as something other than social control, and “health” is very often the first excuse to be reached for then.
Politicians doing these decisions dont go too deep. BMI is widely know, easy to calculate metric everybody knows. And that is all there is to it.
I'm sure these same politicians have medical advisors, who advised them against using b.m.i. and also pointed out what I said here.
Body builders, especially female body builders were completely irrelevant to discussion about fashion models. They were not the ones who were ever shown in those magazines. In terms of body shape, they are not actually thin despite having low fat.
Female body builders are not contemporary beauty standard and never were.
Many magazines feature body builders, whatever their sex be, that have a body fat percentage that is very unhealthy and were it not for the muscles to move their mass up, the fat percentage alone would give them a rather low b.m.i. if they had average muscles.
I do not see how their sex is relevant for the politician's stated goal of promoting health.
If their desire would be to only promote female health, male health be damned, then they should have said so, which they obviously never did, as that would raise quite the eyebrows.
But their real desire was, as said, simply to ban models whom they find particularly ugly, and “health” is simply an excuse, as it often is. — the very same reason why arbitrarily alcohol is quite legal in many jurisdictions where other drugs are banned for “health concerns”.
So many unhealthy things are perfectly legal almost everywhere that I find any politician who claims to do it for the health dubious by default. — it is nothing more than a rationalization to justify his moral and fashion control.
And correct science is a politician's greatest enemy, for it demonstrates that his ideals and morality are arbitrary, and that the explanations he proffers to substantiate his moral control are purely ad hoc.
The very reason they choose b.m.i. is because it was never about healthy, as they proffered, but about subjective æsthetics standards, so they needed a scale that indicated that, rather than health, all the while masking as one that was reflective of health.
That is, if you're a model, you just have to get a doctor to "certify you healthy", which I'm sure isn't at all difficult as they can pick any doctor. Note that the modelling agency will probably "help" with this, as it's very much in their interest to do so. And note the quote from BBC: "But the final version, backed by MPs 2015, allows doctors to decide whether a model is too thin by taking into account their weight, age, and body shape." (so the decision is arbitrary).
There is actually a body dysmorphic disorder called Muscle dysmorphia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia). It is pretty easy to see the similarities of similar disorders.
In general I would also suspect a higher rate of injuries related to those exercise that maintain that large muscle mass, and potential risk factors in regard to diet.
No doubt symptoms for virtually any desire to have something with one's body exist. Personally, I am unnaturally obsessive with my haircut and even the smallest imperfections with it that only I can see annoy me to no end with no one else seeing the difference. — I am quite certain that if this were more common, some psychiatrist would give it a name, and thus it would “exist” as a disorder. Regardless of such nomenclature, the symptoms exist in at least one man, and probably many more.
Well, you're wrong. Your heart has to work harder to pump blood whether you are 300 lbs of muscle or 300 lbs of fat, it doesn't matter. This is well-known, so maybe do a little research?